Kaizer Chiefs’ superb start to the 2025/26 Betway Premiership season has been inspiring but has presented the club with a situation that has given them headaches in the most recent past.
Chiefs have Richards Bay FC as visitors at FNB Stadium on Tuesday (19:30) in their third match of the new season.
READ: The Ribeiro questions and answers pending
They have won the first two matches against Stellenbosch FC and Polokwane City and now need to add their eyes on a third victory.
Yet, three is a number that has haunted Amakhosi since the end of the year 2023 having failed to record three wins in a row since then.
Last season, they were presented with the opportunity to win three consecutive games on four occasions.
They couldn’t make it count on all those four chances in a season that took a see-saw ride of inconsistency.
The last time the Soweto giants won three consecutive games was in the period before the 2023 Christmas when they got past Moroka Swallows, Polokwane City, and Richards Bay.
Cavin Johnson was in charge as caretaker coach at the time.
While Nasreddine Nabi has been away for the two games that Chiefs have won, his assistants Khalid Ben Youssef and Cedric Kaze have led the team to perfection.
Ben Youssef is maintaining calm.
"So, our target this season is to firstly keep our players always mentally ready for the next game," says Ben Youssef.
"Always ready to take each game like a cup game and we decided to take it game by game and we don’t think about the game after.
"For example, we have Richards Bay next, and all our mental focus is on Richards Bay and once we are finished with this game, we start thinking about the next game.
"For this week, we got some time to work and correct our mistakes and improve some offensive qualities for our players.
"When we finished last season, we made an analysis and saw that it was tough for us with the problem of conceding a lot of goals.
"Our target in pre-season was defensive work on how we correct and how (we) improve our defence.
READ: Hotto hits big mark as he plants legendary status seeds
"After two games now, two clean sheets and I think we have succeeded in this point.
"Offensive, there is a lot of thinking inside, there is individual quality, there is team quality, and we know our mistakes and we try to correct it at training.
"There is a lot of technical thinking and the team idea on how we play," adds Ben Youssef.
Photo: Daniel Hlongwane/Gallo Images
